


cascade

by dduucckk



Series: dan?? writing angst?? it's more likely than you'd think [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Book 3: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:21:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27769708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dduucckk/pseuds/dduucckk
Summary: Teaching at Hogwarts is equal parts wonderful and miserable. He loves his students, but some days he looks at them and he sees himself, happy and carefree, with his best friends at his side. Those days are the hardest.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Series: dan?? writing angst?? it's more likely than you'd think [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2031460
Kudos: 16





	cascade

It's been twelve years. Twelve years since Remus last saw that face. It’s still recognizable, but just barely. The Sirius in the papers is thin, thinner than the one in Remus’s memory, and his hair is long and matted. He has a beard.

After the first one, Remus avoids the newspapers as much as he can, but sometimes the pictures catch his eye and he can’t stop himself from staring at them, at this strange, twisted version of the man he once knew.

Teaching at Hogwarts is equal parts wonderful and miserable. He loves his students, but some days he looks at them and he sees himself, happy and carefree, with his best friends at his side. Those days are the hardest.

_Halloween_ is the hardest, when Sirius is in the castle and everyone knows it, and he’s torn open the portrait and Remus knows, he _knows_ that Sirius has done horrible things and wants to do them again, to finish what he started, but Remus can’t stop thinking about him, can’t stop thinking about the fact that he and Sirius are back at Hogwarts for the first time in fourteen years, and it just so happened to be at the same time, and isn't that a coincidence?

Isn’t it a fucking coincidence.

Sometimes he thinks about how James and Lily and Peter will never come back, and that’s when he wants to find Sirius and make him pay. Make him pay for ruining Remus’s life, and Harry’s, and for ending the lives of his best friends.

But he doesn’t, because what would he do?

If he really found Sirius, _what would he do_? As much as Remus would like to believe that he could do it, that he could kill Sirius, that any feelings that he had for Sirius shriveled up and died long ago, part of him knows that that’s not the truth. Part of him knows that if he saw Sirius, he would most likely collapse, or freeze, or do something utterly useless. And then Sirius would kill him.

So Remus doesn’t go looking for Sirius. He doesn’t go looking for Sirius as rumours fly around the school, and he doesn’t go looking for Sirius when Harry tells him about the map. About Peter on the map.

But Remus does start to wonder.

He wonders if maybe, just maybe, there’s a chance. A chance that Sirius didn’t do it. That he was innocent. That he _always has been_.

Remus doesn’t know what to do with that.

He doesn’t know what to do with it, so he pushes it to the back of his mind, because he can’t let himself have hope. Hope only leads to disappointment.

And Remus has had enough disappointment for a lifetime.

But still.

Sometimes.

Sometimes the thought comes, unbidden, to the forefront of his mind and he can’t push it away, doesn’t have the strength. So he lets it in.

Those are the times when he takes out that old picture, the one he was never able to throw away. It was the last time he’d seen Sirius. Their last day together, and Sirius had taken the picture. Remus keeps it folded up and hidden in a corner of his trunk. He doesn’t like to think about it.

But on those nights he pulls it out, stares at it. Traces the writing on the back. _Moony, my love_. He wonders what Sirius was thinking when he wrote it. It’s the first time he’s allowed himself that. He’s not sure if it’s a good idea, but he does it anyway.

And then.

That night, the night he sees Sirius again.

Well.

That night he finds out what Sirius was thinking.

Well.

He doesn’t, not really. But he finds out that Sirius is innocent, and that’s close enough.

He doesn’t even mind getting fired the next day.

Or, well.

He does.

But not as much.

Because Sirius is _innocent_ , and although years and years have been lost, he’s starting to think that maybe they can be reclaimed.

And when Sirius turns up at his tiny cottage on the moors, well. What can Remus do but let him in?

**Author's Note:**

> here's my [tumblr](https://dduucckk.tumblr.com)!


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